The idea of an athlete writing a memoir at the height of his or her career naturally seems premature and almost futile. By definition, the book won't include all of the interesting moments in an athlete's career, so how can it really stand the test of time? There is also the danger that work lacking the perspective of a veteran looking back after a career's worth of lessons learned, combined with the fact that the author likely wouldn't want to be so imprudent as to ruffle the feathers of his contemporaries, the memoir will lack any meaningful or compelling insight (Serena Williams' recent On the Line was a work I found severely disappointing in this way).

Sidney and David Wood's The Wimbledon Final That Never Was...And Other Tennis Tales from a Bygone Era is a fascinating collection of anecdotes of the history of the sport, and of an extraordinary tennis life. The second part of the title best describes the book's content: it is a time capsule packed with some of the brightest and most interesting moments and people that have touched the world of tennis.

Sidney Wood was the youngest man to win Wimbledon – and the only one who did not have to play a final – in 1931, at age 19 (Boris Becker became a 17-year-old Champion in 1985). Sidney was also the tournament's youngest male competitor at age 15. He was a top US player throughout his decades-long career and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1964. After his death in 2009 at the age of 97, his son David gathered Wood's notes for a memoir, then organized and annotated them into The Wimbledon Final That Never Was...